Concept Pop: The deluxe edition in multiple versions celebrating the 40th anniversary of the concert film soundtrack (has there been a better one in the last 50 years?).
David Byrne reports a sense of achievement at the dry cleaning he trusts. That’s where the oversized silver-grey business suit the Talking Heads boss used to wear in December 1983 at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, where the recordings for STOP MAKING SENSE took place. “It’s been here for a while,” Byrne says at the checkout as he presents the receipt. What luck, the piece of clothing you’re looking for is hanging on the rail and the suit still fits, if you could ever say that about the bulky fabric in the XL Eighties look. In the next scene, Byrne sways and flexes in front of the mirror in a suit, with moves inseparable from the historical performances.
The short is now available as a trailer ahead of the deluxe re-release of STOP MAKING SENSE, a whimsical intro to what is widely considered to be one of the greatest live records and films of the past 50 years. And the music? Has it now been freshly cleaned? The mind be silent, the body come – STOP MAKING SENSE. In these three words there was again a piece of conceptual art that the intelligentsia from the punk environment of the New York CBGB claimed for their pop productions.
parody and body talk
The Talking Heads presented themselves as highly reflective antitypes for the film and the accompanying album, they ratted out youth cult and rock ‘n’ roll glory to an audience that had already walked the first three punk rock steps with them and is now on “Burning Down The House”. danced. parody and body talk. The fans followed the Talking Heads into sound spaces that they didn’t know the day before yesterday. Los Angeles, late 1983: An “ordinary guy” in these ridiculously large clothes enters the Pantages stage. In any case, rock stars looked different to date.
It was supposed to be an iconic scene because instead of a band, David Byrne brought a tape recorder. He presses the “Play” button, now the beat is there that leads him and the audience to “Psycho Killer”, Byrne sings about this nervous overexcitement, cultivates the punk psychosomatic (“I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on free / Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire”) and accompanies himself on the acoustic guitar. Which puts the song at the beginning of a story, more David Byrne, less punk power. A smart move.
New band members are added to the story with each song, first Tina Weymouth (bass) on “Heaven”, later Chris Franz (drums) on “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel”, the talking-heads puzzle soon comes to an end with keyboardist Jerry Harrison completed. The differences between the original release in 1984 (nine songs), the reissue from 1999 (16 songs) and the current remastered edition (18 songs) are in the details, “Psycho Killer” starts in 2023 with applause and beats, Byrne’s short announcement missing. Overall, the new edition sounds a bit rounder, but is that a gain?
A cinematic ode to the band, their work and their come together on stage
This deluxe version of the soundtrack contains, and now it gets exciting, for the first time the complete STOP MAKING SENSE concert, including two previously unreleased live takes, “Cities” and “Big Business/I Zimbra” – the whole thing as a double LP and digitally in a Dolby mix, in which Jerry Harrison was also involved. There is also a 28-page booklet with previously unreleased photos and new liner notes from all four band members.
That live album (not the first by the Talking Heads, THE NAME OF THIS BAND IS… with concert recordings from ’77 to ’81 went deep in the gut), David Byrne noted, got a lot of people first with the Talking Heads made known. But you just can’t separate the music from the concert film, in which ironically there is no audience at all, so much do images and music in a common flow drive the story of this then new pop music informed by funk and afrobeats by the nervous young man and his band.
A cinematic ode to the band, their work and their come together on stage, without backstage pictures, without interviews, non-stop music, joy of playing, great grooves. The film stages the relationship between filmmaker Jonathan Demme and his subject with intensity and attention to detail. It will also be released in cinemas this year in a freshly restored 4K version. We can look forward to that at least as much as David Byrne is looking forward to the suit from the dry cleaners.